After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

A large crowd had gathered, and the old woman grabbed a handful of hair to cover her face. She hadn't expected to run into an acquaintance here, and even in her current state, he could still recognize her at a glance.

Her eyes darted around, looking for a chance to slip away, but before she could move, the mayor pushed aside his nephew and pounced on her. His eyes were bloodshot as he grabbed the old woman and forced her down. The onlookers, including the mayor's nephew, appeared to move, but in reality, they didn't.

The old woman was pinned down by the mayor, unable to move, and screaming in pain. Coupled with the mayor's fists, she looked truly pitiful. But then, thinking about what she had done, one felt that even the most pitiful person often has something hateful about them.

The town mayor, exhausted from the beating, sat down to the side, panting.

The old woman struggled to her feet, wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, and then kicked at the mayor. She stumbled, missed, and fell to the ground in a disheveled state. She began to laugh, a series of laughs escaping her lips, sometimes high, sometimes low, as if she had lost her mind.

"Laugh? You still have the nerve to laugh? You ruined my whole family, made me live a life worse than death all these years, every time I close my eyes I'm haunted by nightmares. You poisonous woman, you poisonous woman!"

"Poisonous woman? You old hag, how dare you call me a poisonous woman?" The old woman glared at the town mayor with hatred: "After being mayor for so many years, have you forgotten what you were like when you were young!"

The mayor's eyes trembled slightly as he avoided the old woman's gaze.

"What nonsense are you talking about!"

"I'm talking nonsense?" The old woman pointed at the mayor and laughed, then fell to the ground. "Who turned me into this? It was you! You ruined my family, you turned me into a ruthless and vicious woman."

After saying that, he looked at the crowd of onlookers.

“You think I’m cruel, that I deserve to die, that he’s pitiful, that I’m the one who harmed him. But do you know what he did to me, to my family?” The old woman slowly sat up, smoothing her hair. “My surname is Chang, and my parents named me Happiness, hoping I would be happy all my life. My father was a small-time peddler, the kind you often see in towns or villages. He carried a shoulder pole, with a wooden box full of goods hanging from one end and his own luggage from the other. My mother was just an ordinary woman. We weren’t rich, but we were happy, just like my name.”

“My husband and I are neighbors. We grew up together and have a very good relationship. My parents and his parents arranged our marriage early on, and we got married when I was seventeen and he was nineteen. It was a simple wedding, with only familiar neighbors invited. We bought everything together. Six months after the wedding, I became pregnant. The following year, our child was born, a boy. My husband named him Yong'an, meaning eternal peace.”

The old woman's eyes were full of smiles.

“My parents and in-laws are good friends, and I was raised by them. They treated me like their own daughter. If it weren’t for him, we would be very happy and would always be happy. He ruined everything.”

The mayor's nephew couldn't help but ask, "What does your family's well-being have to do with my uncle?"

"What does it have to do with anything?" The old woman's expression was ferocious: "He is the town mayor, and his father is also the town mayor. Just because he is the town mayor, he can turn right and wrong upside down and bully people at will."

“After Yong’an was born, things got a little tough at home, so my husband thought about coming to town to find work. He was a warm-hearted and hardworking man, and he quickly found a job. When the first snow fell, I came to town to deliver clothes to my husband, and that’s when I had the bad luck to run into him.”

The old woman pointed at the town mayor: "I don't know what he saw in me, he kept harassing me. I was shocked and scared, so I told him that I was married, had a husband and children, and asked him to stop following me."

The mayor stammered, "Don't talk nonsense. I was just being kind. I saw a young woman like you wandering around town feeling disoriented, so I wanted to help you."

"Girl? I'm married and wear a married woman's hairstyle. Are you not only deaf, but also blind?"

“You followed me all the way to where my husband worked. You bribed the shop assistants to testify that my husband was stealing from the shop. When the shopkeeper didn’t believe you, you pressured him to send my husband to the authorities. My poor husband, whose integrity was ruined by you, you despicable person.”

The old woman pointed at the town mayor: "When my parents-in-law heard the news, they went to the yamen to plead their case, but you instigated people to cause a commotion, saying they were obstructing official business, and had the yamen runners arrest my parents-in-law as well. My father-in-law was so anxious and angry that he died. My mother-in-law couldn't bear the blow and committed suicide in prison, leaving behind a will to plead her case before she died. I was the one who collected their bodies, and my mother-in-law wrote the words on the wall by biting her finger."

The old woman gestured: "Can you imagine? I carried my infant child to the prison to retrieve my parents-in-law's bodies. No one helped me. As I struggled to drag my father-in-law and mother-in-law's bodies out of the cell, my husband was in the cell next door. He thought he was useless and that he was the one who killed my parents-in-law."

The old woman wiped her eyes and found no tears; she had long since run out of tears.

“He killed my parents-in-law and my husband, yet he still won’t let me go. He had someone investigate me and found out that my father was a peddler. He tried to use the same trick to put my father in jail as well. My father started selling goods with his master when he was twelve years old and had been selling goods for most of his life without ever cheating a single person. He knew about my father-in-law’s situation and knew that once he was in the yamen, he would never get out, whether he was innocent or not. He wanted to escape, he wanted to take our family with him, but he was beaten to death by those confused villagers who were incited by you and couldn’t distinguish right from wrong.”

“My family suffered one misfortune after another. My father was beaten to death, and my mother, who was already weak, was unable to bear it and died vomiting blood. In just one month, just because my in-laws asked me to go to town to deliver some warm clothes to my husband, and because I was unlucky enough to meet you, my family was destroyed.”

“Yong’an, and my child Yong’an, he’s still so young.” The old woman held up her hands as if holding her own child: “It was you, you took him from my hands and gave him to the slave trader. At that time, I didn’t know you had given my Yong’an to the slave trader. I thought you had just had him hidden away. I begged and pleaded for you to give my child back to me, my Yong’an. You used my Yong’an to threaten me, to make me stay with you.”

"Shut up, don't say anymore!" the mayor cried out. "It's all fake, it's all fake, they won't believe you!"

"It doesn't matter! Whether they believe it or not doesn't matter!" The old woman waved her hand: "My grievances, my hatred, my revenge, I will avenge myself!"

The old woman said she didn't have the courage to take revenge. Even though her parents were dead, all she wanted was to raise her Yong'an well. The town mayor, wanting to possess her, stole her child and sold him to a slave trader. If she hadn't overheard the mayor's conversation with his sister, she would have endured the humiliation and hoped to reunite with her Yong'an.

She hated it so much she gritted her teeth, but what could a weak woman like her do?